Kai Villneff and Sarah Ormandy—Pest Control—enter upstage left. They each turn on three heaters before taking their seats, Ormandy on our right and Villneff our left. A low, barely audible hum drones out of the now-energized heating coils, and several fans innocuously whirr. The reflector of the centremost heater glows a pale orange, but its heat does not quite reach the back rows of the audience. The artists both wear blue jeans and boots, and Villneff has a grey sweater while Ormandy wears a blue blouse with white polka dots. They sit placidly facing us, hands folded quietly in their laps or placed on their thighs, with glasses of water resting on the floor next to their feet. We wait.

Soon enough, their own voices boom from speakers behind them. What does it take to achieve success? Success! of course, they tell us. Like a self-help audiobook had a lovechild with a late-night infomercial, Pest Control begins elaborating upon the steps to achieving success in your professional creative career. SUCCESS is of course an acronym detailing the path to success. First, you have to be Superficial: being beautiful is the first step to success. Then you must Undertake the task of researching your successful interlocutors and social betters (but if you forget to do your research, just remember a few easy phrases, like “I’m a big fan of your work!”). To Connect with others, it is important to maintain eye contact and have a firm steady handshake. And in order to Control the situation, you must be able to make a graceful exit (“Excuse me, I have to use the bathroom”). Then, get ready to Start all over again, because the journey toward success is never-ending. And finally, don’t forget Success! That’s right, the final step toward SUCCESS is Success!

While their pre-recorded voices wryly elaborate in slow, deliberate and redundant but humorous detail the keys to success, Villneff and Ormandy sit stoic as ever in their chairs, maintaining their composure as the heat bears down upon them. They both sweat, and from time to time sip water. It is not until the recorded performance goes through the entire acronym, followed by a few helpful tips, that the artists actually speak. Ormandy speaks and Villneff repeats: “Success!” “Success!” “S” “S” “U” “U” “C” “C” “C” “C” “U” “U” “S” “S” “S” “S”. All they while they maintain their cool-blooded composure in spite of what I can only imagine must be oppressive heat. And as abruptly as they began, Villneff and Ormandy stop, stand up, turn off the heaters, and exit upstage left. The audience is left in silence to wonder, is it over? There is some murmuring, and people chuckle to themselves while looking around. Meanwhile, Pest Control have snuck in behind us. They re-enter the gallery space, wearing demure turtle-necks and brandishing fizzy drinks in fluted glasses. Their cold demeanor is gone as they enter the room beaming, putting into hyperbolic practice their own advice. “Hi! How are you? How is your project going? I’ve heard so much about it! That’s fantastic—oh, excuse me I have to go!” They meet and greet and schmooze and shake hands and make eye-contact with just the right amount of cheerful disingenuousness. At one point, I find myself shaking Villneff’s hand vigorously, goofily smiling in response to his candour and charm, all the while stammering as I realize my mind has gone completely blank in the moment and I have no idea what to say. I look “quite the fool,” as Ormandy had warned I would if I did not stick to their steps to SUCCESS only minutes prior.

Pest Control blurs lines between scripted theatricality and live performative presence: they layer the performance art trope of the affectless-artist-is-present-in-absurd-situation underneath a droll and self-aware pre-recorded audio performance; this contrasts sharply with the lively and responsive denouement of the work. It was unclear to me at the time—and it remains so upon reflection—whether the fun performative payoff at the end of the work is helped or hindered by the lengthy diegetic buildup that precedes it. I suspect the work might function more effectively were it formally split into two ‘parts’. The pre-recorded theatre seems better suited to live separately, accessible like an actual audiobook or ‘how-to’ video online, and serving to inform the more performative ‘conclusion’ of the work in the gallery. Irrespective of how it might be reimagined in future iterations, however, the work nevertheless pokes and prods anxiety and insecurity in a peculiar way and you are left unsure whether you’ve learned how to bamboozle your way through high society or if you’ve just been bamboozled yourself.

]]>http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/12/20/pest-control-success/feed/0Ivan Lupi: “Bench”http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/12/18/ivan-lupi-bench/
http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/12/18/ivan-lupi-bench/#respondMon, 18 Dec 2017 20:23:27 +0000http://www.visualeyez.org/?p=2764The whining buzz of quivering needles penetrates the air. It reverberates in my skull someplace behind my eyes and between my ears. Meanwhile, fall leaves, impelled by a cool wind, skitter across the concrete in a staccato arrhythmic rush, and the warmish sun cuts between the surrounding buildings and projects lengthening shadows. People around, passing by, waiting for busses, or maybe eating a hotdog, seem to pretend not to notice. This scene, unfolding before them on that wooden park bench, might as well be the most banal thing they’ve seen. But, some people do take care to notice, sit down, perplexed, intrigued, or curious, and start asking questions or telling stories of their own.

Ivan Lupi is tattooing himself. He sits on a bench in a park downtown, hunched over and tracing lines on his belly with fresh black ink. The lines resolves into letters and words, spelling out W E T P A I N T on two lines. Underneath, letters in faded red read ‘PEINTURE FRAICHE’. The stems and arms of the new letters are thick, and the word ‘WET’ is exaggeratedly stretched out to completely cover its French counterpart. He works left-to-right, starting with his left, filling in the ‘T’ before moving along to the ‘E’ and the ‘W’ respectively, working his way down his abdomen to the letters skirting his waist. The vibrating stylus he holds gingerly between his thumb and middle- and forefingers is connected by a snaking wire to a transformer in a bag behind his feet, which is itself precariously connected to an outlet several meters away through a long green extension cord.

Ivan Lupi performs “Bench” at Visualeyez 2017. Photo by Paula Kirman.

Lupi is conspicuous here, sitting shirtless amongst these office buildings and office dwellers. He is difficult to ignore, but some manage to nevertheless. Others steal quick glances from what they presumably deem to be a ‘safe’ distance, well within earshot but far enough to avoid being implicated in whatever might be going on. The artist is like a shaman here, flaunting convention and calling into question what is acceptable decorum. Some people are less apprehensive, or lacking in timidity or have an abundance of temerity or are just completely unfazed by the artist. They approach him to sit and chat. They ask questions about ‘why’ and whether this is sanitary and safe or they tell him their own stories or listen to him talk about things otherwise unrelated. Meanwhile Lupi hunches over and traces the letters on his skin. He takes frequent breaks, leaning back with his elbows propped on back of the bench and legs stretched out in front of him.

Later, I find the artist on a bench in the gallery. He has moved his performance inside to escape the quickening autumn cold. I sit next to him and we talk—about talking, about him, and his work and tattoos and my own work and our lives and love and the weather—and I examine him and his work in closer detail. The bench and the floor around him are covered in a fine halftone pattern of sprinkled black spots of ink. His skin sheens with a slick of sweat, and the wet ink on it wicks into otherwise imperceptible lines and creases like fine black capillaries webbing away from the letters. It’s tender, he says. This is now the third day in the past four of tattooing over the same lines again and again, slowly building up the density of ink embedded in the his skin. I don’t doubt that it’s swollen and raw, but the pain is layered away beneath a gloss of ink.

There is something evocative and symbolic, Lupi tells me, about tattooing one’s own skin, transferring a thought directly from your mind onto your body with no intermediary—like a closed loop. But this public process of self-inscription opens the artist up at the same time, to criticism and dialogue and conviviality alike. He is approachable and disarming, in spite of or because of being layered from head-to-toe in various tattooed markings and inscriptions, indices and records of previous performances and life events. This performance itself is not one of exhibitionism or masochism, and is rather one of creating a space for conversation and exchange. It catches people off-guard with a bit of absurdity and makes them just uncomfortable enough to consider why they might feel comfortable or not in the first place. A half-naked man, sitting on a bench scrawling a caution into his skin, might not seem like the most obvious choice of conversation partner. But, Lupi is transparent in his kindness, warmth, and generous willingness to listen and talk, and he models a kind of caring engagement, albeit belied by a wet, sticky warning on his stomach.

]]>http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/12/18/ivan-lupi-bench/feed/0Ray Fenwick: “How to Talk with Plants”http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/11/20/ray-fenwick-how-to-talk-with-plants/
http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/11/20/ray-fenwick-how-to-talk-with-plants/#respondMon, 20 Nov 2017 01:42:28 +0000http://www.visualeyez.org/?p=2759There are plants and people around me, some sitting on shelves and chairs, others standing on the floor in pots and shoes alike. I recognize some of these others here, but many I do not, and I cannot even guess at most of their names. The greenhouse in which we find ourselves now is awash in greenlight, punctuated by the pulsating rhythm of a bulb blinking on and off from behind a large fan up near the roof. The air is thick with humidity and smells of rich humus, of earthy vegetable matter and dirt. We face toward the de facto ‘front’ of the space, where some audio equipment stands amongst a surfeit of plant-others, and a single human figure as well.

Ray Fenwick is that human. He stands, hands clasped around the microphone he holds close to his mouth, staring at one of the houseplants sitting in front of him. The sound of his breath rushing over the microphone distorts and shudders through the space like indecisive gusts of wind. It is a wet and meaty sound, accentuated by other noises escaping his mouth: lips clapping together or tongue sliding around, along, and between his teeth and gums. Meanwhile, the microphone doesn’t register anything at all from his plant compatriots.

“Hello, I am a kind of meat, and I have feelings and sometimes I try to share those feelings.”

Still, the plants do not seem to care enough to respond.

Fenwick speculates about the possibility of interspecies communication, reaching out with his meat-hand to touch and caress the leafs and fronds of his leafy friends. His sotto voice gurgles in the back of his throat, and the sibilance of his whispers sliding past his tongue resonates in the vaulted space as he experiments with different vocalizations and vocalities. What sort of communion is possible between two beings so radically different? Are they and we so radically different at all?

He warbles and screeches in various efforts at communication, but in the absence of any clear response from the plants present, Fenwick talks instead to himself. His inner monologue is given voice through a large speaker routed through a mixing board and a pedal at his foot. He converses with his own pre-recorded thoughts. The disembodied voice poses questions and raises provocations, and the artist responds in kind. If plants could respond, what could we expect them to say? Maybe they can, but we just haven’t asked the right questions yet. Maybe they do, and we are otherwise oblivious to their retorts and exhortations. Maybe our own thoughts that we interpret as spontaneous creativity and insight are actually psychic missives from our chloroform fellows?

“It wasn’t creativity. It was a message, and you missed it!”

“What am I to you?” He poses the question, ostensibly to the plants around him, but offers the rhetorical query freely to the room. Fenwick’s conversation, with the plants, with himself, with the audience, is a series of similar propositions volleyed back and forth, at times answered directly and at times left to hang with their pendulous metaphysical weight an answer in and of itself. What is the nature of conversation, of relation between beings, irrespective of their apparent similarities and ability to communicate? He posits, in between breathy mouth sounds and some quizzical clicks of his tongue, that perhaps the ambiguity between plants and humans is no greater than that between humans and humans who seemingly talk with relative ease.

Fenwick’s performance ultimately asks us to consider what it means to take conversation as both method and material. He extends the form to logical extremes, addressing putatively non-sapient plants as easily and earnestly as he talks with his own pre-recorded voice. The reciprocal call and response between Fenwick and himself is contrasted with the unilateral monologue he maintains with his planty partners. Each exchange seems to be about as meaningful as the other. The audience is left to consider the degree to which relation—any relation at all—is possible, whether it is between other meaty beings like ourselves or our less animate cohabitants.

]]>http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/11/20/ray-fenwick-how-to-talk-with-plants/feed/0Julianne Chapple: “Women Appear (and sometimes they learn how to disappear)”http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/11/13/julianne-chapple-women-appear-and-sometimes-they-learn-how-to-disappear/
http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/11/13/julianne-chapple-women-appear-and-sometimes-they-learn-how-to-disappear/#respondMon, 13 Nov 2017 22:20:47 +0000http://www.visualeyez.org/?p=2749We find ourselves sitting in a simulacrum of a living room. There is no fourth wall. Nor are there walls one-through-three. At the centre of the space is a large Persian-style carpet. In one corner: a modernist teak chair with blue upholstery sat on a small rug, a floor lamp, and a side table on which is placed a crystal decanter of whiskey and a tumbler glass. In the opposite corner: another, smaller armchair that looks quite comfy, and which has its own side table with a crystal ashtray on it. Some potted house plants—umbrella and ficus trees maybe?—bound the space, as do some benches. But the benches do not appear to be ‘of’ the space; they are merely here for our, the audience’s, benefit, so that we may watch. Strewn about and stacked upon the benches and tables are books, a plurality of which reference feminist art history and criticism. Music that matches the sentimentality of the room pours out from a speaker in the corner. Carefully placed on the rug in the centre of the room are sheets of paper on which are printed in large letters the house rules: “make yourself at home,” “enjoy your stay,” “feel free to move through the space,” “at your leisure,” “peruse the available reading material,” and “watch and be watched.”

Julianne Chapple performs “Women who appear (and sometimes they learn how to disappear)” at Visualeyez 2017. Photo by Adam Waldron-Blain.

Julianne Chapple sits in the blue chair. But ‘sits’ isn’t the right word. Chapple is sprawled across the chair, her limbs hanging toward the floor, in a way that carefully toes the line between languid and luxuriating. She is wearing high-waist tweed slacks and a loose-fitting white blouse. Her mousey hair completely obscures her face. Picking up the tumbler, Chapple pours it several fingers full of whiskey and takes a long sip. Her fingers take delicate purchase on the glass, and it seems rather that her hand and arm dangle from it instead.

An indeterminate amount of time passes, but at least one or two songs play that seem to long for less complicated times or the elusive love of a coy woman. Chapple sips at her whiskey from underneath her long hair, and we all sit and stare at her and each other. With nearly imperceptible slowness, the artist falls from the chair and onto the floor. But ‘falls’ isn’t the right word. Chapple slumps, almost melting, moving like a glob of treacle pouring itself onto and across the floor. There is a wallowing, indulgent viscosity to her movement as she makes her way around the space, whiskey ever in hand and face rarely seen.

She finds herself eventually sprawled across the rug, transcribing scribbles from a notebook into large letters on white paper. These letters resolve into provocative truisms, written each onto one or two pieces of paper, and arranged carefully in a grid that spans the carpet and spills onto the gallery floor:

muscular relaxation may make you appear / passive and/or sexually available

making up too much space may be seen / as an act of aggression

taking up too little space may be seen as weakness

making eye contact with an observer may make / you appear complicit in being watched

not making eye contact with an observer may make / you appear complicit in your role as an object

adopting the role of observer may be seen as / siding with your oppressor

Reading them, I am given pause considering the context, and I feel as though others here are as well. We watch carefully as Chapple writes these axioms, craning our necks, tilting our heads, and squinting out eyes to make out the words. There are uncomfortable chuckles and thoughtful murmurs as each page is finished and placed among the others. I let my eyes track across the room, lingering in the mutual stares of others doing the same. Chapple meanwhile sips her whiskey and meanders herself across the floor, onto and amongst the furniture with serpentine aloofness and acrobatic aplomb.

Julianne Chapple performs “Women who appear (and sometimes they learn how to disappear)” at Visualeyez 2017. Photo by Adam Waldron-Blain.

The artist makes her way around the gallery space, back to the blue chair, underneath benches, and behind people’s legs standing along the white walls, all without much obvious thought or care for who else might be in her space. And it is obviously and demonstratively her space. She is neither demure nor shrinking in her capacity to occupy it, and while she seemed once to be hiding from our gaze it is more clear now that she is rather refusing it. There is a peculiar and contradictory intimacy arising from encroaching upon Chapple’s space and her body, and we as an audience are left to question our own role in our discomfort here.

Chapple’s work asks us to engage with and impinge upon the artist. But we are left wondering to what extent we should take up such an offer simply because it is what is expected of us in this particular social space. The artist spreads herself out before us and challenges us to consider the tropes that lead us to conflate rightful confidence and bashful sultriness. To what degree are we obligated to watch—leer at?—an artist, and take her as an object to be examined? To what degree are we obligated to avert our eyes? These questions are rhetorical, but also pertinent, as made obvious by the uncritical and impudent stares that fall upon Chapple from some present in the room. Are we more or less complicit in watching others watch rather than by refusing to look at all?

]]>http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/11/13/julianne-chapple-women-appear-and-sometimes-they-learn-how-to-disappear/feed/0Cameron Pickering: “Pass-Altruistic Panic, Changing Form”http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/11/09/cameron-pickering-pass-altruistic-panic-changing-form/
http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/11/09/cameron-pickering-pass-altruistic-panic-changing-form/#respondThu, 09 Nov 2017 08:20:31 +0000http://www.visualeyez.org/?p=2740A tangled mass of wires hangs precariously from the ceiling, a distended mesh halo hovering just a few inches above the gallery floor. Like a delicate, sculptural cocoon, it wraps itself around a column of light, which splashes onto the floor from a single spotlight and dissolves into the dark corners of the space. A body lies on the floor, arms outstretched and toes wiggling ever so slightly as though marking the rhythm of inaudible beat.

Cameron Pickering stares up at the ceiling from the centre of his nest-like cage and I sit across the room, watching, contemplating the quiet. Only one or two other people share the space with us for the time-being. I hear one of his arms drag across the floor—skin sliding across concrete, pulling with it tiny motes of dust and grit. He reaches up toward the wirework suspended above him, tracing along several sections with the tips of his fingers. The wires are knotted together in an irregular not-quite-honeycomb matrix, various lengths meeting and winding around one another. Their collective weight seems palpable: the nest-cocoon stretches taught near the ceiling and pulls tighter and closer together nearer the floor. One of Pickering’s fingers follow along a single wire before coming to a knotted juncture. With something like circumspective curiosity, it is as though his finger must carefully consider which path to follow next. I feel as though if I could listen carefully enough, the entire lacework would resonate like a street performer’s glass harp.

As the artist’s hands ponder their own handiwork and my eyes adjust themselves to the dissolving darkness, I turn my attention toward the rest of the space: there is a flashlight in one corner; two chairs sit some distance apart against a wall, each with a spotlight (currently unilluminated) clamped to its leg; across the room a large speaker has an audio cable snaking out from behind it; and scattered throughout the room are pieces of white chalk and words—instructions, commands—transcribed onto the floor.

While he sits within his wiry web, Pickering invites viewers to participate in the work, both directly through his chalk-scribbles and indirectly by way of the various objects scattered about. Using the flashlight, I read the invitations written on the floor. Run! Play a game of tag! Tell a joke! Initially, none of the handful of people here in the space seem interested in taking the artist up on these invitations. Before long, however, a critical mass of viewer-participants gather, and quiet gallery-whispers gradually become fully-fledged conversations, laughter, conviviality. The speaker pops loudly as someone plugs the 3.5mm audio jack into their phone. The space is soon awash in music.

Pickering resists the tropes of the overly serious, stoic performance artist, talking to his viewer-participants—guests—going so far as to invite several into his cocoon to examine it from the inside-out. But, his audience eventually disperses, and the space is quiet once again, save for one or two of us lingering behind. Someone has traces the intricate maze of shadow cast by the wire onto the floor in white chalk lines, and someone else seems to have tried practicing their German in several cryptic messages. Pickering himself lies down, wiggles his toes, draws on the floor, and plays with the shadows cast on the wall by the spotlights. He writes in a journal, and as I get close to examine his wires, he asks me how to spell ‘conscientious.’ I think I gave him the wrong spelling. Whoops.

Over the course of several hours, people come and go. Music plays, punctuating the lengthy periods of interstitial silence. Pickering bides his time, meditatively contemplating something, writing, tracing wires, playing with shadows, and wiggling his long toes. Near the end of his performance, which now stretches into the evening, a crowd has gathered again. The space is buoyed with energy, and a woman asks if the artist would dance if she were to play music. He would. And he does. His feet slide across the floor in relative silence against the upbeat rhythm. He picks up some wire cutters and invites others to do the same. Together they dismantle the artist’s nest, dissecting it laterally, releasing him from its bounds.

For the seven and a half hour duration of his performance, Pickering juxtaposes various formal and conceptual elements in his work and challenges viewers’ expectations. His own animated body—and those bodies of his viewer-participants—stand in active relief against the static (if dynamic) sculptural forms of his wirework, while the quiet contemplative mood suggested by the duration of the performance stands toe-to-toe with the radical interactivity of his instruction-gestures and direct audience engagement. While I found myself most drawn-in by those quiet, thoughtful moments in between bouts of action, many others were brought in and had their interest activated by Pickering’s lively and energetic performative gestures.

]]>http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/11/09/cameron-pickering-pass-altruistic-panic-changing-form/feed/0Josh Clendenin: “Folamh”http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/10/17/josh-clendenin-folamh/
http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/10/17/josh-clendenin-folamh/#respondTue, 17 Oct 2017 21:22:34 +0000http://www.visualeyez.org/?p=2732An array of white notecards covers the floor of the gallery. Hundreds of white rectangles, each seemingly placed with deliberate care, tessellate the room. Something is scrawled on them. Words, I think. I recognize some, but others are mostly unintelligible to me. Three tables, each with a pair of chairs, are arranged near the periphery of the latticework of paper and scribbles. A cohort of viewers observes, standing back along the walls and crowded near the entries.

Josh Clendenin walks on his toes, choosing carefully his footsteps between the notes. There is only barely enough space between each for him to balance precariously on the balls of his feet. He takes a step, pauses, and contorts his body to maintain his centre of gravity. Leaning almost impossibly forward and back and to the side, Clendenin scans his domain, searching. He bends down, plucking from the concrete floor a card with a question mark. Flipping it over, he scans what is scrawled on its reverse, and locks eyes with a viewer leaning against the wall.

“What are you afraid of?”

The man appears caught off guard, but quickly comes to an answer.

“Death.”

Clendenin seems to ponder the profundity of this for a moment, before turning again toward his words. He strides amongst them, never fully finding his footing. The artist pauses momentarily, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. Picking up another question mark, he addresses another person across the room. The artist’s words fall effortlessly from his lips, but they refuse to take purchase in my own head. He is speaking Irish, I would later come to learn. A knot begins to tie itself in my stomach and he looks expectantly at a women who responds only with wide eyes. He repeats his question, reading again directly from the card. Several intense moments pass, during which I can only imagine that her heart is pounding in her ears at least as loudly as my own is in mine.

Clendenin breaks his expectant gaze, turning again to the words scattered at his feet. His eyes flick back and forth, and he cranes his neck while striding carefully. His toes barely disturb any of the words. He is looking for a specific word this time. Several words. He picks up a card, and another from the opposite side of the room, and several more. Repeating his original question, he gestures and mimes with his whole body, hoping perhaps to transmit something not in the words themselves. And he reads from the new cards in his hand, only single words, but English words. Adding several more words from his floor-lexicon, a recognizable and stilted pidgin translation emerges.

“You like get lost travel nouveu ville?”

“Do I like getting lost when I travel somewhere new?”

He nods and shrugs his shoulders. Close enough.

“I try not to get lost…”

Clendenin addresses each of us watching in this manner, asking questions in English, French, Spanish, and Irish. Sometimes the exchanges are quick, and sometimes several minutes pass before he and his interlocutor find some kind of mutual understanding. What are you passionate about? What’s your favourite movie? Do you like any sports? The artist articulates himself using only the words and phrases he finds on the floor, in addition to bodily gesture.

Eventually, a brave soul seats themselves at one of the tables and soon the artist joins them, question-card in hand. Clendenin poses a question in French, and his tablemate responds—in English—after screwing their face up, as though trying to recall distant French lessons. The artist replies in kind, albeit still in French, but without turning to his words on the floor for his vocabulary. They both converse like that, going back and forth from French to English, until Clendenin stands up in search of a new question card to bring to someone else who has sat himself at another table.

At some point, I find myself sitting across from the artist, nervously waiting to find out what question and language he has in store for me. We lock eyes. He speaks slowly, but I am nevertheless unable to understand his words. Sitting here at the table, Clendenin speaks freely, but only in the language of the question card in his hand: Irish. He pantomimes speaking, pats his chest, and points at me. Tell me about your… He stands up and returns with the word in English. Family! I tell him about my sister, and my parents, and my dog, and I ask him about his family. Several minutes later he has taught me the Irish words for mother, father, sibling, and step-sibling. The process is labourious, but the dread which welled up in my throat when I first heard those seemingly unintelligible syllables fades as I begin to enjoy the collaborative process of learning and understanding something new.

Clendenin’s performance has various modes of engagement with his audience and it is presented as a puzzle: we are asked to figure out not only how to communicate with the artist but also the rules by which we are able to engage him. The work is strongest in those moments when the artist must literally find the words to express himself, balancing precariously and moving deftly on the balls of his feet. He makes bodily, in a very literal and present way, the grasping feeling of needing to articulate something but not being able to find the words. It resonates viscerally with that momentary feeling of amnesia when the word you need is just on the tip of your tongue—or under the tips of your toes.

For Julianne Chapple’s performances (September 27th and September 30th) the artist has requested for individuals to provide books related to topics of art, dance, performance or fiction by a female author to be utilized in her performance. If you are planning on attending either of Julianne’s performances, we strongly encourage you to bring a selection to contribute to the work. All copies of books will be returned to their rightful owner following each performance. Additionally, if you are able to provide living room style furniture for Julianne to use in her performance, please contact us and we can make arrangements for pickup and delivery following the festival.

Josh Clendenin

For Josh Clendenin’s performance Folamh, the artist will require a spectator to participate in both editions of his performance. The first performance will be taking place on Thursday September 28th at 3pm and the second on Friday September 29th at 9pm. If you are interested in taking part in Josh’s performance, please email your full name and preferred participation date to program @ latitude53.org.

]]>http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/09/22/call-for-participants-2/feed/0Confronting awkwardnesshttp://www.visualeyez.org/2017/09/21/confronting-awkwardness/
http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/09/21/confronting-awkwardness/#respondThu, 21 Sep 2017 21:09:49 +0000http://www.visualeyez.org/?p=2673For 17 years the Visualeyez festival has provided space for performance artists to craft and present performances. Just as the act of performance art itself challenges cultural norms, Visualeyez has focused in on a theme that questions our contemporary life. As we looked back at the first Visualeyez the themes of surveillance, voyeurism and the boundaries between our personal and private lives emerged as the themes in the early 2000s. This year the festival focuses on the idea of awkwardness.

Curator Todd Janes writes that as technology has permeated our interactions, they have become highly codified. “If we were to suddenly remove societal perceptions and norms of behaviour then we could examine if there is such a thing as suitable societal interactions. If not then there might not be such a thing as awkwardness.”

]]>http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/09/21/confronting-awkwardness/feed/0Save the Datehttp://www.visualeyez.org/2017/08/25/save-the-date/
http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/08/25/save-the-date/#respondFri, 25 Aug 2017 20:30:05 +0000http://www.visualeyez.org/?p=2628The artists have been confirmed and we are hard to work designing the schedule. Save the dates Sept. 26 – Oct. 1 for the 17th annual Visualeyez. And keep your eyes open for upcoming schedule announcements.
]]>http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/08/25/save-the-date/feed/0CALL to ARTISTS: VISUALEYEZ 2017http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/03/08/call-to-artists-visualeyez-2017/
http://www.visualeyez.org/2017/03/08/call-to-artists-visualeyez-2017/#respondWed, 08 Mar 2017 01:34:43 +0000http://www.visualeyez.org/?p=2576The 17th annual Visualeyez festival of performance art happens from 17–24 September 2017 in the downtown core of Edmonton, Alberta, exploring on the curatorial theme of AWKWARDNESS.

Visualeyez takes place over a period of eight days and it is required that all invited artists are able to attend for the entire length of the festival. Artists experience the work of other artists; engage in discussion groups, meals and other activities that enhance the work of individual artists and the performance art community/network within Canada and beyond. Please visit visualeyez.org for the past festival information.

Latitude 53 will invite artists to Edmonton to explore issues around the curatorial theme of Awkwardness. Within this theme we are interested in proposals that address issues of social interaction, interpersonal phobias, clumsiness, mis-communication, and social isolation. Visualeyez is seeking submissions that will connect with Edmonton and Alberta residents and have resonance within an international dialogue. The festival pays a CARFAC artist fee, two-way travel and accommodations for all artists.

Proposals should include: a CV; artist statement; a detailed description of the work you wish to present and explore; and support material all sent as individual pdfs. Please also address how your develop, think, and explore your practice. You can include images, video, print or digital documentation of your work or as links, pdf, or image files. Only digital submissions will be accepted.

Please be courteous of image size and materials that you are sending. Please ensure that attachments total to less than 10MB; if more space is required for time-based or intermedia work please provide a link via DropBox or a hosting service such as Vimeo or Youtube.

Artists shall be contacted by late June regarding the status of their proposals.

Visualeyez is joyfully supported in part by Canada Council for the Arts, The City of Edmonton, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The Province of Alberta, the Edmonton Downtown Business Association, and Latitude 53’s members, volunteer and donors.